{"id":29542,"date":"2022-11-15T14:24:20","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T22:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=29542"},"modified":"2022-11-15T14:24:20","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T22:24:20","slug":"what-cards-are-in-your-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/what-cards-are-in-your-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"What Cards Are In Your Hand?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I joined the Color Guard my freshman year in high school. I learned how to spin a flag and toss a rifle. To this day, I still feel the urge to do drop spins or double-time any time I am holding an object that remotely resembles a flag. Brooms, tubes of wrapping paper, golf clubs, etc. they all become wannabe flags in my hands. While I doubt I would be successful at a helicopter<\/a> toss, I often feel the impulse to try! Even though I am no longer limber enough to do a high kick and a pirouette would trigger a migraine, when I hear certain music my body wants to go through old routines. This is known as muscle memory. After hours of practicing something, your body knows what to do without even thinking about it. I had never thought about this practice in terms of leadership preparedness, but this is just the technique that Eve Poole suggests in her book Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership.<\/em> She writes, \u201cI am going to call it \u2018leadersmithing\u2019, because it is about apprenticeship, craft and hours of practice.<\/strong>\u201d[1]<\/a> (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

Practice leadership? That seems like a strange idea. How do you practice<\/em> leadership? Poole provides a handy how-to guide for this practice she calls leadersmithing, stating, \u201cWe need more and better leaders badly, at every level in organizations, and also in all walks of life.\u201d[2]<\/a> In her book, she provides fifty-two different traits a leader should have, using the metaphor of a deck of cards to organize these traits.[3]<\/a> I grew up playing cards, so I love this metaphor. I was playing Hearts, Gin Rummy, Pinochle, Solitaire, and other games from an early age. Any time we visited my grandparents, we would pull out the cards after dinner and play. My favorite card game has always been Pinochle, so I thought it would be fun to look at Poole\u2019s traits for the namesake meld, a Pinochle, which consists of a queen of spades and a jack of diamonds.<\/p>\n

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The Queen of Spades: Creativity<\/strong><\/p>\n

This one is right up my ally. I love being creative. Genesis 1:27 tells us we are created in the image of God. It stands to reason that if we are created in the image of the Creator, we must all have a spark of creativity in us. Poole states, \u201cCreativity is one way to limber up a mind that has got stuck in a business-as-usual rut.\u201d[4]<\/a>Creativity is about looking at things in a new way, doing something different. My favorite creative outlet currently is sewing. When I feel stuck with an assignment or task, I set it aside and work on a sewing project. With each project, I learn something new that I can apply to future projects, and I allow my mind to reset. In The Five Faces of Genius: Creative Thinking Styles to Succeed at Work<\/em>, Annette Moser-Wellman says,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most valuable resource you bring to your work and to your firm is your creativity.\u201d[5]<\/a> I love bringing my creativity into everything I do.<\/p>\n

Jack of Diamonds: Letting Go<\/strong><\/p>\n

Letting go. Sigh. Poole characterizes this as \u201cA complementary practice that will help you surf uncertainty…\u201d[6]<\/a>This is not easy, and it certainly takes practice. Letting go of expectations, hopes, dreams, or the life you thought you would live. In this program, I am learning to let go of my perfectionist academic practices. No, I do not have to read every single word of every single page of the book. Sometimes just getting the assignment done is enough. What I have worked on letting go the most is the need for approval from others. I spent so much of my academic career working hard to receive a pat on the back from my parents that they were never going to give me. Now, I am learning that I do not need to seek someone else\u2019s approval to dictate my self worth. Bit by bit, I am letting go of the weights the pull me down so that I may, \u201crun with endurance the race that is set before us\u201d (Heb. 12:1)<\/p>\n

These are the two traits I will continue to hone over the next few weeks. I will bring my creativity into my Design process and continue to work on letting go of my perfectionist tendencies. What about you? What cards do you hold in your hand right now?<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Eve Poole, Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership<\/em>. (London, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017). iBooks pg. 116 of 281.15 of 281<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 14 of 281.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 104 of 281<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., pg. 178 of 281.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Annette Moser-Wellman, The Five Faces of Genius: Creative Thinking Styles to Succeed at Work<\/em>. (London, Penguin Books, 2002). pg. unknown<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Poole, iBooks pg. 116 of 281.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I joined the Color Guard my freshman year in high school. I learned how to spin a flag and toss a rifle. To this day, I still feel the urge to do drop spins or double-time any time I am holding an object that remotely resembles a flag. Brooms, tubes of wrapping paper, golf clubs, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2092,2091],"class_list":["post-29542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-eve-poole","tag-leadersmithing","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29545,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29542\/revisions\/29545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}